Robert Powell on Jesus, marriage and the Belgian detective: 'My Poirot is my Poirot'

Robert Powell on Jesus, marriage and the Belgian detective: 'My Poirot is my Poirot'

ROBERT POWELL has come a long way since portraying Christ in the Seventies TV film Jesus Of Nazareth. Now playing Agatha Christie's famous detective, he reflects on a long career and the secret to his 38-year marriage.

Actor Robert Powell says the secret to his 38 year marriage to Babs Lord is compatibility [GETTY]

As big roles go they surely don't come any bigger than Jesus and portraying the Son of God in Franco Zeffirelli's 1977 TV movie Jesus Of Nazareth certainly made the 30-year-old Robert Powell a household name.

What is less well-known is that he was originally cast as the traitor Judas Iscariot. Only when he emerged from the make-up room with a beard and long hair, looking so much like everyone's mental picture of Christ, was the decision taken to switch his role.

Though his performance was widely praised Powell feared it would limit him to playing only good guys. "It took no time at all to get over the Jesus job," he says, laughing.

"I immediately reacted against it by making a film called Beyond Good And Evil in which I die strapped to a mast being assaulted by sailors. Franco was very nervous."

In the end the UK censor refused to give the film a certificate and it got only a limited release.

"I have always been attracted to difficult work," says Powell. "There really doesn't seem much point in looking for the easy life as an actor. I would simply get bored. Having said that I felt that the sooner I moved away from the role of Jesus the better."

He has more than proved his versatility, slipping from period action in The 39 Steps via the heated melodrama of Ken Russell's Mahler to comedy with Jasper Carrott in The Detectives.

He is about to take on another iconic role as Hercule Poirot in Black Coffee - Agatha Christie's first play and the only one to feature her famous Belgian detective.

Robert Powell with Liza Goddard and Robin McCallum from Black Coffee [GETTY]

With the role previously played by Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov and (for 25 years) David Suchet, there are some big shoes to fill. But Powell insists:"My Poirot is my Poirot, complete with Belgian accent. In a role like this you remove yourself from yourself and the accent really helps.

"Poirot dominates the proceedings. He is a control freak. The plot is gloriously complicated. We have to keep going back over it to find out who has done what to whom."

Powell confesses he had to overcome an aversion to Agatha Christie when he accepted the role. "When I die I want to be the only person in the world not to have seen The Sound Of Music. By the same token I didn't want to read an Agatha Christie novel. But she really can write. I was surprised."

Sitting in the spacious sitting room of his north London home Powell is far from the spiky figure I had been led to expect by some commentators. His two dogs greet me with enthusiasm and his wife Babs brings coffee and biscuits within moments of my arrival.

They have been married for 38 years and the story goes that producer Lew Grade insisted they marry because you couldn't have Jesus living in sin with a member of TV dance group Pan's People. Is the story true?

"No it's not. We had discussed getting married but when you are faced with disappearing for six months, as I was on the Jesus job, it seemed to make us both feel more secure and to demonstrate a commitment to each other. We did it very privately and secretly."

So what is the secret to sustaining a marriage? "It is our compatibility," says Powell. "We are two people who complement each other. I am very practical and logical. She has all the qualities I lack, especially generosity of spirit. I could do with more of that.

"And we don't spend all our time in each other's pockets. First it was down to the extraordinary luck of finding Babs. The number of potential partners who would tolerate me is few. Babs is utterly and totally lost and hopeless with things like tax, form-filling, bureaucracy.

"But thanks to my wife I get congratulations for all the first night cards. She has an extraordinary ability to remember things and has a generous attitude towards everybody. In return she's got someone who didn't get into trouble."

Trouble? What kind of trouble? Powell's public profile has never been blighted by scandal but he has dabbled with danger. "I've tried cocaine. I don't like it. And I have tried marijuana many times. It depresses me. I'm not a control freak but I don't like not being in control which is why I don't take drugs and why I don't get drunk."

In his youth his piercing blue eyes and slightly ethereal looks brought the sort of indiscriminate adoration that can easily turn a man's head. How did he handle it? More importantly how did it affect his wife?

He recalls: "The heartthrob thing came in the late 1960s and to be honest it was fun! But I was very aware that well-known actors are two people - who you are and who other people think you are. Life only gets tricky if you confuse the two.

Robert Powell made his name as Jesus in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus Of Nazareth [GETTY]

"I was still the bloke who liked to play football and go to the pub and play darts. Babs was very famous when I met her and completely unfazed by the whole thing."

Now nearing 70 he retains an enviable youthfulness but looks back at his younger self with some exasperation. Playing Nurse Mark Williams on Holby City for six years gave him the sort of professional stability he once scoffed at. In his debut TV series Doomwatch his character only lasted for the first series, at his own request.

"I was 24 when I was offered Doomwatch," he recalls. "There was an option for a further series and I turned it down. It is a wonderfully glorious thing to be unknowingly arrogant.

"My agent was furious. Half way through the first series the writer Kit Pedler came to me and said, 'How do you want to go?' and I replied, 'Irrevocably.' 'OK,' he said. 'We'll blow you up.'"

There were more letters to the Radio Times when his character Toby Wren evaporated than anything since the death of Grace Archer. Now he would be happy to have another TV series offered and he might not be quite so keen to jump ship at the end of the first series. Regrets? He's had a few.

Some time in the 1980s he was telephoned by a Los Angeles journalist and asked if he knew he was up for the role of James Bond.

"It was news to me and it didn't go any further so who knows? And there was a little flurry of 'What about Robert Powell?' a few years ago on the internet when Doctor Who was up for grabs but that didn't come to anything. I think I would have enjoyed that."

Meanwhile there is Poirot to be dealt with - a control freak played by a man who doesn't like not to be in control. Convoluted but somehow appropriate.

Black Coffee runs at the Theatre Royal Windsor (01753 853 888/theatreroyalwindsor.co.uk) until January 18 and tours until May 10